Summary

• Think of mercenaries as potential allies or enemies, offering services to important clients like the players for a price. Charm matters!
• Be open about mercenary abilities - describe weapons, armor, magic, and fighting style to show strength. NPCs can hire them for missions.
• Establish boundaries for mercenaries - what will they kill and what won't they? Set prices for services beforehand to avoid surprises.

Good old mercenaries. They can be very similar to your player adventurers in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons, but they're more willing to do unsavory things during their jobs, such as not caring or even targeting innocent people, or maybe just solving their issues with utter violence. But then again, so might your players, so maybe mercenaries aren't so different from adventurers, after all.

Still, having an NPC mercenary, or maybe a whole group of them for tougher jobs, can add an interesting dynamic between them and the players, as mercenari𓃲es are poteওntial allies or enemies, and sometimes both at different moments of the campaign — the BBEG can pay better than the players, sometimes.

5 Be Social

You're A Businessman, In A Way

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Just like merchants or other t🌌raders, a mercenary is someone trying to sell a product — that product being their service. And while the broody mercenary that stays ൲in the corner of the tavern drinking is a fun trope, how many jobs will they actually get like that?

Your mercenary — or at least one of them if it's a group — needs to do some talking and job hunting. That means going around important people and offering services. While these interactions will probably not happen in the game, that's a good excuse as to why they're known around town, and there are important clients your mercenary can throw their charm on — the players.

If you're running a difficult campaign where the players can accidentally go to high-level areas a bit too early, having a charismatic mercenary offering their services nearby is a fun way to balance the game and introduce a character they can grow fond of — facing and surviving dangerous situations with someone is a very efficient way to make your players like the character. So do your best to talk and convince them to hire your NPC by starting the conversation and offering help — for a price.

While we mentioned that you could make a group of mercenaries, we recommend a single character if the intent is to have the players hire them. Otherwise, you'll add way too many characters to the turn order if two groups of characters start walking together in the dungeon, slowing the game down significantly.

4 Be Open Abo🦂ut Your Abilities

Especially Effective To Sell Your Service

Another trick for extra fame around NPCs and to get your players invested in potentially hiring the character — ജas well as simply making your characterﷺ act like an actual person — is casually talking about how they fight.

First, that information can come from how you 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:describe the character. What weapons do they carry? What armor do they wear? Do they have an♓y type of arcane items, such as a wan🍰d, a magical staff, or a grimoire? Do they have ritualistic tattoos or holy symbols? That alone says a lot already.

Then a simple conversation can give the players a notion of how strong the mercenary actually is and how♛ they fight, from fighting from afar to up close, from hitting with 🎃weapons to casting spells. The power of said spells would also give more experienced players some idea of how strong the mercenary is.

Instead of a group, you can make a table of multiple random mercenaries with different sets of abilities and let the players decide who they'll hire based on that. These mercenaries can be leveled classes or, even better, they can have stats from the Monster Manual, using humanoid monsters like Scouts, Bandit Captains, or even Gladiators or Mages.

3 ༒Establish Your Boundaries 🅰

What Are They Not Willing To Kill?

A mercenary is a character specialized in killing, so it's important to pre-establish (or improvise) how far they're willing to go. Do they even kill people, or just monsters and other unnatural beings? Do they go for political targets or important people? Will they kill bystanders, or do they only kill the target? Do they kill witnesses, even if that includes children? Boundaries are particularly important to avoid mercenaries who would do things your 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:players are uncomfortable with, such as the aforementioned child-killing.

When thinking about their morals, there's also the business side of things rather than just the killing part. Would they take a bribe from the target if said target is richer than the client? Are they willing to kill their own friends if someone hires them to do so? Will they charge extra for bystanders becoming casualties?

These are topics that highly depends on the person's morality, so each mercenary would have a different answer to these questions. An unscrupulous mercenary that is the players' only hope can cause a complex situation, where the character can attempt to be more violent than the players want them to be and cause an extra obstacle while still helping them out.

Not to mention that you can make a seemingly friendly mercenary who betrays ꦇthem later on, whether because of a bribe or because a villain hired them to kill the party despite having a history with said party. The story🍸 can go many ways here.

2 Establish Y𝓀our Prices

How Much Is A Goblin's Head?

This is something that is best for you to prepare before the game. How𝐆 much does your mercenary actually charge if your players are actually invested in hiring them? Do they charge per mission or per creature they kill?

While this is a more technical part of the character, having these prices established will help you whenever you need to roleplay these details, and the character can charge more or less depending on their personality, the party, and the world's situation, and whether the creatures they're hunting are tough to kill. A vampire should definitely be more expensive than a hobgoblin, after all.

You🉐 can create a table with all the creatures in the surrounding area and put prices in copper, silver, or gold from killing them ꦚso you can give players proper answers.

Just to give you a quick tip on smoke and mirrors, if the mercenary is there for story reasons, but you don't actually want the players to hire them, just make their services incredibly expensive — the players will likely give up on hiring them.

1 ﷽ Use Them As Potential Rivals ജ

Let Other NPCs Hire Them

What if whoever gave the players their current missi🍸on, or someone who also wants the problem to be dealt with, hired the mercenary? Mercenaries can be potential rivals during the dungeons, being there to do the same mission, and depending on the mission, being an actual problem.

For example, if the town's burgomaster wants the party to retrieve an item from the dungeon while the BBEG wants the mercenary to retrieve the same item, the mercenary will be a problem. You can even make things more complicated by having the dungeon be so hard that the party and the mercenary need each other's help, but everyone knows they'll have to fight eventually, building up tension.

You can also have the mercenary deal with side quests that the players took too long to go after, showing them that there are actual consequences when it comes to ignoring certain endeavors. And if the mercenary does a good job and gets recognized,♛ the party will have a rival when it comes to getting future job proposals.

If the idea is to have the players and the mercenary fight, then it's a good moment to think about a group of mercenaries, so the fight itself gets a bit more balanced.